UCL has been organizing well attended Hackathons, seed funding pitch competitions, partnerships with founders and accelerators as well as running its own mini incubator for the past few years. Even a quick skim on google would show a multitude of student (UCL) born startups that have succeeded: Loom, backed by Google Ventures and acquired by Dropbox this year + Vungle, raised $17MM series B this year. I understand that from a Kings perspective the tech scene looks weak, but to discredit the scene as a whole when UCL has been leading the way with significant success for the past few years, is misleading.
Similarly, the situation in Cambridge (and as I understand it Oxford) has been very solid for a very long time.
There exist Computing and Technology (CUCaTS), Computing Facility (SRCF), Technology Enterprise (CUTEC) and Enterpreneurs (CUE) societies. The latter two have fallen somewhat out of favour and notice around the Computer Lab the last few years, but are still running strong attracting tech entrepreneurs from Physics and Engineering.
There's a lot of focus on moving out to established tech companies (blame the recruitment fair and regular company events) but this outgoing year appeared to have a high fraction of the CS year attempting to work on startups in one form or another.
As someone who has been at one of those institutions and is currently at the other, I haven't noticed much in the way of hackdays at either... Maybe it's changed at Cambridge, but I didn't see much sign of brewing collaborations at the time (beyond the creative-commons-or-public-domain-only file sharing network).
In Oxford I can recommend Oxford Geek Nights (http://oxford.geeknights.net). It's not student run, but sometimes has students speaking and it's always interesting.
I'm glad to hear about your successes at UCL, but I think you've missed the point of my blog post. I am not discrediting the tech scene at all. In fact, half way through the post I admit that we thought the problem was inactivity when in fact it was just being disconnected.
UCL might have done all of these awesome things, but a lot of people outside UCL did not know about it. We want to connect the UK tech scene as a whole and get people to notice all of these great achievements. There are tons of great societies and people should know about what they're doing.
The title speaks for itself, it's about connecting the UK student tech scene.
IMHO, if students want to get connected, they should be getting involved in their local tech community (i.e. the non-academic one). There are loads of regular, tech-focused events here in London, such as our own Hacker News London meetup[1] and MiniBar[2]. If you're interested in jobs, Silicon Milkroundabout[3] and AppsJunction[4]. If you're just interested in socialising over a few beers, there's Silicon Drinkabout every Friday evening.
Those are just a few of the regular events - there's loads of others. Startup Digest[6] is a good way of finding out about them.
While this is great, it is pretty hard to find students attend all of this regularly. Also, university is where most students will naturally spend their time. In the US especially, there's a great balance of things happening in the local tech community and at College. I would say you need to be a bit involved in both, but your university should primarily have the environment to allow you to start looking into all of the other things happening around you in the first place.
The post isn't saying there is no tech scene but can we even compare what it is at the moment to how it is in america.
A good example is http://codelaborate.org/ . They went to the same uni(Oxford), same course, both doing programming on the side & yet didn't know each other till this summer in London.
All our efforts before were fragmented, resulting in for example, three hackathons in the same weekend.
Sure great things are happening in individual places but imagine the exponential growth when it's less silo'ed & everyone is working together towards a bigger goal.
I just checked out codelaborate.org. What a shitty website! The design is nice, but the font is almost impossible to read. I assume it's because I'm on Windows (OS X usually renders fonts better than Windows), but it's a really good way to quickly alienate half of your target audience...
Thanks for the feedback. We're aware of an issue in certain browsers on some versions of Windows (boo hiss Windows font rendering) and will fix it as soon as we get a chance - though don't fear, the issue isn't actually affecting half of our audience! (didn't quite anticipate today's surge in popularity!)
I don't think the post is arguing that the student tech scene is weak, just fragmented. These are amazing successes - it'd be great to have heard about them.
It would be such a boost for the student scene to hear from such student-born startups and learn/look up to them.
I definitely don't think it's about whether UCL is leading the way or King's.
Comments
UCL has been organizing well attended Hackathons, seed funding pitch competitions, partnerships with founders and accelerators as well as running its own mini incubator for the past few years. Even a quick skim on google would show a multitude of student (UCL) born startups that have succeeded: Loom, backed by Google Ventures and acquired by Dropbox this year + Vungle, raised $17MM series B this year. I understand that from a Kings perspective the tech scene looks weak, but to discredit the scene as a whole when UCL has been leading the way with significant success for the past few years, is misleading.
Similarly, the situation in Cambridge (and as I understand it Oxford) has been very solid for a very long time.
There exist Computing and Technology (CUCaTS), Computing Facility (SRCF), Technology Enterprise (CUTEC) and Enterpreneurs (CUE) societies. The latter two have fallen somewhat out of favour and notice around the Computer Lab the last few years, but are still running strong attracting tech entrepreneurs from Physics and Engineering.
There's a lot of focus on moving out to established tech companies (blame the recruitment fair and regular company events) but this outgoing year appeared to have a high fraction of the CS year attempting to work on startups in one form or another.
As someone who has been at one of those institutions and is currently at the other, I haven't noticed much in the way of hackdays at either... Maybe it's changed at Cambridge, but I didn't see much sign of brewing collaborations at the time (beyond the creative-commons-or-public-domain-only file sharing network).
In Oxford I can recommend Oxford Geek Nights (http://oxford.geeknights.net). It's not student run, but sometimes has students speaking and it's always interesting.
It's improving at Cambridge, but slowly.
I heard that a third of the graduating CompSci class applied to Entrepreneur First this year?
I'm glad to hear about your successes at UCL, but I think you've missed the point of my blog post. I am not discrediting the tech scene at all. In fact, half way through the post I admit that we thought the problem was inactivity when in fact it was just being disconnected.
UCL might have done all of these awesome things, but a lot of people outside UCL did not know about it. We want to connect the UK tech scene as a whole and get people to notice all of these great achievements. There are tons of great societies and people should know about what they're doing.
The title speaks for itself, it's about connecting the UK student tech scene.
IMHO, if students want to get connected, they should be getting involved in their local tech community (i.e. the non-academic one). There are loads of regular, tech-focused events here in London, such as our own Hacker News London meetup[1] and MiniBar[2]. If you're interested in jobs, Silicon Milkroundabout[3] and AppsJunction[4]. If you're just interested in socialising over a few beers, there's Silicon Drinkabout every Friday evening.
Those are just a few of the regular events - there's loads of others. Startup Digest[6] is a good way of finding out about them.
1: www.meetup.com/HNLondon
2: www.meetup.com/minibar
3: www.siliconmilkroundabout.com/
4: www.meetup.com/AppsJunction-Where-Startups-Meet-Developers
5: silicondrinkabout.com
6: www.startupdigest.com/digests/london
While this is great, it is pretty hard to find students attend all of this regularly. Also, university is where most students will naturally spend their time. In the US especially, there's a great balance of things happening in the local tech community and at College. I would say you need to be a bit involved in both, but your university should primarily have the environment to allow you to start looking into all of the other things happening around you in the first place.
The post isn't saying there is no tech scene but can we even compare what it is at the moment to how it is in america.
A good example is http://codelaborate.org/ . They went to the same uni(Oxford), same course, both doing programming on the side & yet didn't know each other till this summer in London.
All our efforts before were fragmented, resulting in for example, three hackathons in the same weekend.
Sure great things are happening in individual places but imagine the exponential growth when it's less silo'ed & everyone is working together towards a bigger goal.
I just checked out codelaborate.org. What a shitty website! The design is nice, but the font is almost impossible to read. I assume it's because I'm on Windows (OS X usually renders fonts better than Windows), but it's a really good way to quickly alienate half of your target audience...
Thanks for the feedback. We're aware of an issue in certain browsers on some versions of Windows (boo hiss Windows font rendering) and will fix it as soon as we get a chance - though don't fear, the issue isn't actually affecting half of our audience! (didn't quite anticipate today's surge in popularity!)
Glad you shared your concerns but your comment could have been written much nicer & still achieved the same effect.
Yeah, I know, but I often don't do it, on purpose. It's an easy way to filter people, those who prefer the form from those who prefer the content.
I don't think the post is arguing that the student tech scene is weak, just fragmented. These are amazing successes - it'd be great to have heard about them.
It would be such a boost for the student scene to hear from such student-born startups and learn/look up to them.
I definitely don't think it's about whether UCL is leading the way or King's.